Thursday, May 14, 2009

Looking for Popular Ideology in Ancient Rome

Mary Beard reviews T. P. Wiseman's Remembering the Roman People:
This book is ground-breaking for its simple suggestion that the ideology of Roman popular politics is not entirely lost to us, and for its virtuoso demonstration that, fragmentary, inadequate and intensively studied as our sources for the period are, they may still have more to tell us. Here as elsewhere, T. P. Wiseman offers us a view of late Republican Rome not preoccupied solely with elite self-interest, wealth and dignity – but where some voices still spoke out for equality, the sharing of wealth and land and for the rights of the common people.
Sounds like sort of a mix of PoMo LitCrit and Intellectual history. Interesting.